RW,
Interesting. Now, what about labor costs: extra FAs and additional FE for the DC10? What about maintenance costs per mile? Landing costs - are they the same for each aircraft?

How many flight crew (cockpit and cabin) on each aircraft?? Me thinks the -10 will have several more flight attendants (and the Flight Engineer too) than the 757. If someone could factor in the crew costs to that pie chart ...

Then factor in the more revenue on the -10 for coach people buying their snackies .. and a WHOLE lot more cargo (does a 757 use containers or is it all loose loaded).

Those are also factors that maybe someone more knowledgable than me might help with. but if pax $ on a dc-10 is $18600 more. times 365 days thats $6,789,000.00 per year not counting the cargo (in containers) sure seems like alot

Minor mistake I used a 600 dollar fare which is round trip. Its the same for a 757 so the 6.789 mil is the same. Also, trying to pry the salaries out is like pulling wisdom teeth. figure a senior pilot per year at 180 grand a co-pilot at 100 grand a fe at ? A senior FA at 90 a year a purser at 100 a year and (how many fa back there) 6? at 50 a year that should be about 780,000 a year for crew. Any FA's out there want to divulge

Well I sure feel like a dope I goofed on my figures so ill try again. Round trip 12 hrs @ $600 dollars cheap fare. 757 7200 gals of fuel @ 1.42 = $10224 DC-10 = 30672 A dc-10 costs 20448 more RT SEA-HNL 49 more seats X 600 bucks = 29400 29400 minus 20448= 8952 more income per flight. 8952x365days= $3,267,480.00 per year. This is counting all fares @ 600 cheapo econo price. I realize that the higher end crew and extra FA's is a cost. So is the maint on the 10s. I dont think its too much more however. Using a 600 ticket price leaves out the cargo $ the food, booze and headset rentals in coach. It also leaves out the higher fares and the two extra FC seats Nw has also started flying the DC-10s past HNL to NRT (service hub) and gets a lot of revenue for the Intl flights. Sorry I goofed up but it still seems that the DC-10s west coast to hawaii makes more money. Hopefully when the 7E7s come onboard the 10s will do the west coast HNL runs and if we are lucky go to sydney bangkok norita and china. Everyone loves a few day stopover in HNL

Hmm...I've been lucky that my silver status has always come through for me on them.....but the other day when I changed a return it was $50 more for a F fare (+$100 change fee)...wanna guess which class I booked

If that were the case they'd still be flying them. While I miss the DC10's, there are many economic reasons that they are being phased out. Hell, CO, AA, UA all dumped them years ago.

Another thing about Hawaii is that a large number of passengers in both F and Y are on award tickets. I flew SFO-HNL 2 weeks ago and chatted a good bit with an f/a w/ 37 years in who only flies HNL routes. She stated that at least 1/3 of the pax on our particular flight were mileage or non-revs. I have read before that Hawaii flights for most airlines are at best break even, however service must be retained due to prestige of the carriers route network and that their customers want to fly there.

You're also assuming 100% loads. I have heard that SEA keeps the DC10 on the HNL runs due to a contract with agencies that book Hawaii vacation packages and guarantees NW a certain number of seats. These are definetly not $600 fares.

Yes they are. The sea flight is always full when they tried doin the 757s out of here they must have gotten a half a million complaints finally they went back to the 10s I have been an unlucky one who had to pay a full fare FC ticket on a 757 last fall before the 10s started up again. yuk. BTW are you and your fa lady saying that 2/3rds of the sea hnl are paying FC? sounds like a money maker. Also the non paying fares are really paying with miles that are counted as liabilities on NWs books. And as so many have complained they arent gettin the cheap point upgrades so nw is makin out

Hey bear I think that plane is the older 200 I got a stiff neck in FC. Just think if I didnt fly that day and bring my wife, You might have got those seats when are you gonna get gold?

The 1/3 number that the f/a referred to was for Y and F for our particular flight on that day. I know that this number is for one flight on one day and can not be used to rationalize profit/loss on a market, but it is a fair example of why HNL is often referred to as a "low yield" market. BTW there were only 10 passengers in F on our 753, at least 2 of whom paid $250 at the gate to upgrade. And that NW still allows mileage upgrades (for elites) from any fare for 17.5k miles, you can bet several more took this route. I used HNL as a stopover on a $540 r/t Lansing-Singapore.

I'm actually glad that NW has the 753's on the HNL runs. This aircraft provided them with the opportunity to re-enter this market from the west coast with yields that exceed what they could charge for DTW-west coast flights, which are only 500 miles or so shorter in length. They would never have started PDX-HNL or restarted SFO/LAX-HNL with DC10's.

Also note that the $1.42/gal fuel number that you used was the average system wide. Care to guess how much more it is in HNL?

A while back I left hnl and was dozing off. The blaring pa woke me up. It seems that when the plane was pushed back to the scale it was over weight. The pilot explained that HNL ground pumped an extra 3500 lbs of fuel on-board We proceeded to the gate and dumped 3500 lbs of paying cargo to make up for the difference. Higher fuel price- less paying cargo- an extra hour for customers. Is that any way to run an airline? Dont ya luv it PS the sea hnl is so strong that the sfo and pdx get fed from here And as a fter that was a great deal to sing